David Schiefelbein: The best time to go fishing

Friday

Our newspaper’s fishing master says this weekend should be prime time for an angling adventure.

Our newspaper’s fishing master says this weekend should be prime time for an angling adventure.

His best fishing times indicate Sunday will be optimal for catching fish. Darrell Taylor puts a lot of time and energy into compiling these calculations for our readers.

Speaking as an editor, I love to bring this important information to our readers who fish, but personally, I remain a non-believer.

The peak fishing time will be Sunday at and/or around 12:10 p.m.

High noon.

Middle of the day.

High sun.

All things anglers despise as not being key times to catch fish.

Readers will note that all those references have to do with the sun, which, in my younger days, I sorta worshipped on occasion, most often if it included bodies of water and college girls.

Darrell’s forecast, however, is based on the stellar opposite, the moon.

My ying is his yang, so to speak. (Does that make us a couple of ying-yangs?)

I have, at times, pictured Darrell’s research this way: It’s a dark night, he’s dressed in some Druid high-priest-meets-Third World-native-witch-doctor garb, dancing around a fire in a Stonehenge-like pit constructed to plot the progress of the full moon across the horizon.

Darrell says it’s not quite that romantic a process, nor is it all that exciting.

When I call him The Moon Witch, it’s pretty funny to me, especially since his last job was with IBM as a customer service executive with worldwide responsibility for Amoco Oil's satisfaction with services delivery.

I’m not really sure what all that entailed, but it sounds pretty high-level important.

I’m pretty sure he likes his new job fishing Lake of the Ozarks three or four times a week – every week – a lot better. Instead of reporting to a roomful of corporate executives in suits, he reports to you.

I know he’s got a better deal now, and has way more fun!

Since Darrell and I both lived in Chicago, I happen to know a feller named Doug Hannon from Minnesota developed the idea of peak fishing times based on calculations of the moon’s impact on tides and pressure in the water of inland lakes.

There are lots of sources to find lunar secrets for peak fishing times.

But Darrell has taken that notion, looked through his telescope at the old man in the moon, plotted calculations across a map of Lake of the Ozarks, and determined the best time for you to catch fish here.

All it takes is believing. And dropping a line in the water.

A couple of summers ago, I asked Darrell why it stormed real hard just before all of his best fishing times.

He said he hadn’t realized it had, but I knew it because that’s when I was planning on hitting the river. The heavy rain had forced the river up and by the time I got out there, the fish were turned off while waiting for the water to recede.

On other occasions, I challenged him by saying I went out when his chart said to and only caught one fish.

His response? “Yes, that might be true, but that might have been the only time that day you would have caught that one little 1/2-pound bass.”

Dang, I didn’t see that one coming. He must have been a high-profile salesman in his day … but I bet he never got to argue crankbaits as part of his old job.

Back when I got out of college in the mid-1980s, I tried to land a job in the fishing industry. At one point, I had a 3-inch notebook stuffed with clippings of every fishing lure I could find, categorized and organized by type so I could learn the business.

I met lake fishing hero Denny Brauer at a seminar he taught in southern Illinois, and got the chance to talk with him for a while afterward. This was years before the eventual Bassmaster champion was featured on a Wheaties box and had his effigy carved in Land-O-Lakes butter.

He was a much better fisherman than I was, which I fully appreciated when he sent jig-and-pig zinging past my ear as part of a lure pitching demonstration. I was sitting in an aisle seat and can still feel it brushing the hair on my earlobe to this day. Did I mention there was a b-i-g hook on that jig?

“Lures aren’t so much meant to catch fish as they are angler’s dollars.”

I managed to get interviews with the manufacturer of Lunker Lures, Babe Winkleman’s operation in Minnesota and Bass Pro Shops before they went big time into boat manufacturing. I never did land that job in the fishing industry, but I did learn that sales was not my calling.

Darrell is obviously still a good salesman because he continues to talk me into running best fishing times even though I remain unconverted. There are other times this weekend you can go fishing, some of them best times too.

I continue to think the best time to go fishing is anytime you can slip away and get out and enjoy the water.

I’ll be digging around in my rucksack looking for that old bottle of scentless sunscreen for fishing in the sun, so e-mail your comments to editor@lakseunleader.com.

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